The Zero Identity
by SayCheshire
Summary: Seventy years after the Requiem, a Geass user lays claim to Nunnally's life. Suzaku, maddened by the possibility of Leloucia's survival when he finds her missing from the World of C, drops the mask of Zero and sets about looking for answers, leaving behind an empire rocked to the core and a trail of Imperial blood. Fem!Lelouch paired with Suzaku. Intrigue.


_**The Zero Identity**_

_**A/N:**_ Hello, the prologue is basically a canon retelling from Suzaku's POV with fem!Lelouch. I haven't watched the series in the last few months, so if you see any inconsistencies, I would appreciate it if you told me. I wont change it if it is something that would mess up the plot, but I would like to know anyways.

_**Prologue: The Knight of Zero**_

Suzaku dreams of raven black locks and violet eyes but wakes up besides a girl half hidden by a curtain of bubbly pink hair. Common sense says that what he does is stupid, that he shouldn't be laying naked next to Euphemia while Cornelia is sleeping down the hall, but he doesn't care. He thinks that even though Cornelia might make him a eunuch for touching Euphemia and kill him later, that is still the healthier alternative to what he really wants to do. Leloucia, even though she is not recognized as a princess anymore, is not someone he can approach. He needs her, and if she were to reject him and ignore him, he wouldn't know what to do.

TZI

Euphemia's death enrages Suzaku. Not because he cares, Darwin forbid, but because now that she's gone he wont have anyone's window to sneak into at night, make love to and pretend that the cultured voice moaning his name is Leloucia's. He vows to make Zero pay for that. He has taken away his way to pretending that the woman he loves, loves him back.

TZI

Suzaku shrugs off the little blond boy that tells him of Zero's Geass. Until the boy mentions Leloucia.

"Well, why don't you ask Zero about Euphemia, and about Leloucia while you are at it?"

The boy doesn't answer Suzaku's questions, but the mention of Leloucia sends him into a frenzy. Euphemia had asked him once to give Leloucia her love as he had been sneaking out of her window before he went back to Ashford in the morning. He had been startled because he hadn't known that the two sisters had met ever again after Leloucia's exile to Japan. Was it possible that before Zero had shot Euphemia he had discovered the presence of a hidden princess? Was it possible Zero had captured Leloucia? It seemed likely. Ashford had been taken over by the Black Knights and what reason would Zero have to take over a _school_, of all places, if it wasn't because of two renegade princesses?

TZI

Zero stands in front of him in all his cold, composed glory as Suzaku points a gun him. "Kururugi."

"Zero." Rage tinges Suzaku's tone, worry over Leloucia filling his mind. "Tell me, of what use are Nunnally and Leloucia to you? I know the Emperor won't mind you killing them. You can't hold their lives over his head."

"Nunnally and Leloucia." Zero's tone is cold, but Suzaku thinks with grim satisfaction that there is an underlying current of incredulity behind his words.

Zero's next words are not what Suzaku expects, "_You idiot!_" It is the tone that makes him pull the trigger. Those words remind him of Leloucia. She has a unique way of saying those words when she speaks to him, and Zero's words carry the same cadence as Leloucia's. For once, the iciness in the man's tone is gone, replaced by anger. Suzaku doesn't feel any satisfaction in the fact. He is too incensed by Zero's words. He would not allow Zero to imitate Leloucia.

The bullet strikes Zero's mask. Nothing happens, but then it cracks in the middle and falls to the ground with a dull thud.

Raven black hair spills down Zero's back and when Zero raises his head cold violet eyes stare back at him. It is in that moment that Suzaku realizes that Zero is not a man, but a woman. It is in that moment that Suzaku realizes that Zero is not Japanese. It is in that moment that Suzaku realizes, while he falls to his knees, that Zero is the one person who hates the Britannian Empire more than all Elevens put together; who has both the intellect and inclination to turn terrorists into knights. He understands, now, that there can only be one person in the world arrogant enough to challenge an Empire that takes up a quarter of the world. Suzaku realizes that Zero is the woman he loves.

The realization leaves him horrified.

Eyes wide, he stammers, not knowing he is thinking out loud. "I killed you. _Almost._ I shot you. I _almost _killed you once. _Twice. Three. Four..._" Suzaku shakes his head, relieving every time he could have killed her but didn't because of luck and circumstance. His mind keeps showing him made-up situations in which he _had_ killed her. "Too many. There are too many." He raises his eyes from the floor and looks her directly in the eyes, shocked, his eyes two wells of emotion. "I didn't mean to."

Leloucia stares at him dispassionately. Or so he thinks. He doesn't know. He detachedly watches her lips-pink, cupid-shaped and soft, he imagines-part open. She is about to speak, but at that moment Suzaku hears a noise behind him and he turns around with a speed that surprises even him. He shoots and the bullet pierces the stomach of a surprised Kallen Kousuki.

"Kouzuki-"

A gasp escapes the pilot's lips before her eyes glaze over. She is dead before she hits the floor. There is too much blood. He realizes she had been shot before finding them and that Suzaku had hit her in the heart.

Leloucia realizes this as soon as he does, but that doesn't prevent her from staring at her corpse in regret. "My Gurren... pilot." She stares disbelievingly at Kallen before her eyes darken and become bitter.

That is when they see a body laying besides Karen. Chiba's open eyes stare at the cavernous ceiling blankly in death. Suzaku reassesses the situation quickly. From the position of the bodies, he knows Chiba had been half-carrying Kallen. Since the blood on Karen seems to not be her own, Suzaku assumes she had been shot with some kind of tranquilizer.

Leloucia had come close to him when he had in an attempt to get a better look at the body. She tries to step away from him, but Suzaku grabs her arm and pulls her roughly to him. She struggles against him, nails digging into his arms through two layers of clothing. Some other time, he would have let go of her. Yet he is overwhelmed with joy because she isn't dead. This leads to him covering her lips with his.

Leloucia stiffens. Suzaku doesn't particularly care. That is, until he feels a gun pointing at the side of his neck. His hands freeze in her hair, the silky strands feeling like water as they flow away from his grasp.

Suzaku slowly opens his eyes, cold fury stamped in his every movement. Leloucia, who had broken the kiss, looks at him in anger. "That's more like it, Suzaku." She points the gun at his chest now and her eyes turn guarded. "Help me look for Nunnally. That's all I need from you. All I need."

"Nunnally's here?" To be honest, he had kind of forgotten about Nunnally.

"Help me _find Nunnally._" Leloucia grinds through her teeth, biting out every word.

"How do you want me to do that? What is this place, anyways?"

"I don't know." Leloucia frowns and her gaze slides to the engraved door. "I don't think I can do anything until C.C. comes back."

"C.C." Suzaku had seen the remains of the Gawain and the Siegfried on his way to the cave, but that green-haired girl isn't normal, so maybe she isn't dead.

Leloucia's eyes snap back to him and her hand tightens in the gun. Suzaku has seen her shoot as Zero. She is good and there is no way she would miss at this distance, but Suzaku knows she wont pull the trigger, at least not to kill. So he moves.

If she had been expecting him to move, she would have hit him. But Leloucia isn't expecting him to move when he has a gun pointed at him from five feet away and by the time she reacts and pulls the trigger he is already toppling her towards the ground, the bullet moving diagonally towards the ceiling.

He yanks the gun from her hands, throwing it far into the cave together with his own. It isn't like he needs a gun to contain her.

"Goddamn you, Suzaku!" Her hand connects with his cheek, the slap loud in between Leloucia's hard breathing. Another hand fists in his hair, jerking his head up. Somehow, Leloucia manages to get on top of him before he is able to take both her hands into one of his and slam her down on the floor, her hands forcefully wrenched above her head.

He kisses her again because he needs her and all his fears are thrown out the window now. He expects her to struggle against him. He expects her to bite at him. But she doesn't. Instead, she kisses him ferociously, although slopily. She somehow untangles her legs from his and wraps them around him so that her hips come off the floor. He gasps as she rubs against him and she lets go of her hands. The next thing he knows, his back connects against the rough ground and Leloucia-sarcastic but kind, alluring but pure Leloucia-has her hands in his hair and is straddling him, moving herself against him in a way that makes his thoughts splinter and his breaths become ragged.

She jerks him up by his hair into a seating position. She pulls him into a kiss, bruising both their lips and roughly separates them both when Suzaku feels he is about to pass out. She trails her mouth next to his ear and Suzaku shivers when he feels her dry breath against his ear. "Did you do this with Euphy, Suzaku?" Her tone is mocking and there is both anger and hurt hiding behind the vitriol. "Did you?" And again she shoves him down and kisses him like there's no tomorrow. "Was that the price for her naming you her Knight? I bet you loved it, exchanging Knighthood for sex."

Suzaku grows angry. He certainly had not cared for Euphemia as much as he had said he had and he had happily used her to forget about the girl roughly kissing him. As such, he is the last person that should be defending her honor even if he had been her Knight, but what Leloucia was accusing both Euphemia and him of doing-even if she had gotten the sex part right-was insulting.

Suzaku fists his hand in her hair and takes control of the kiss. He is rough but not nearly as whimsical as Leloucia. "I did," he says, "and do you know _why_, princess?" Leloucia slowly opens her eyes. She looks more beautiful and delicate than ever, painfully arousing. Her lips, slightly open, are red and swollen. Her cheeks are flushed a lovely shade of pink and her eyes are heavy, her long eyelashes prominent when he looks at her from above. Her breathing is heavy, too, and Suzaku feels more proud that Leloucia looks this way because of him than he had ever been about making Euphemia dissolve into a storm of moans and whimpers.

She lowers her to the floor gently, taking off her cloak and cravat. He rubs himself against her in circles where he lays half on top of her, resting between her legs. Leloucia moans as he trails kisses up her jaw to end just bellow her ear. His hands unbutton the jacket of her suit and his hands slip under, caressing. "It might just have something to do with being such an ice cold bitch no one would ever think you would participate in something as dirty as _sex_." He ground his hips against her harder for emphasis at the word _sex_. Leloucia's back arches and her hands grip onto Suzaku's forearms. For a while there is silence, only broken by Leloucia's panting breaths as Suzaku grinds himself against her. "Are you?" A specially hard movement of his hips. Leloucia arches her back once again and Suzaku takes the opportunity to remove her purple jacket once he peals her hands off his forearms. "Too good for sex?" Another hard movement of his hips and Leloucia, instead of arching her back, stiffens. Then she relaxes and Suzaku's ears are greeted with the sexiest sound he has ever heard-a long, drawn out, needy moan.

Suzaku runs one hand through Leloucia's silky black hair even as the other slides under her untucked shirt and Suzaku is surprised, even though he shouldn't be, that her breasts are bound tightly by bandages. "You know wearing this in an almost daily basis is unhealthy, right?"

Leloucia cracks open those violet eyes he loves so much and sits up, unbuttoning her lilac shirt lazily. She gives him a contented look and a 'hmm' that sends Suzaku's blood racing down. She shrugs off her shirt and undoes the bindings slowly, her eyes intense as they look into his, and Suzaku thinks that she is doing it on purpose.

Leloucia lets the ten foot bandage fall to the floor. Her breasts are slightly pink but her nipples are hard and all Suzaku wants to do is take them into his mouth. She crawls over to him, and if before there was any question of her teasing him, there is none now. She sits on his lap and his attention miraculously slips from her breasts and down to her hips, whose shape had been hidden with the bandage. His hands drift through her body, touching but the Leloucia grabs one. He looks up at her. There is amusement in her eyes as she tugs at his glove. She puts his nylon-covered hand on the base of her hip then proceeds to do the same to the other one.

Her skin feels smooth through the thin black material. Suzaku hooks his thumbs in the waistband of her pants. Leloucia tips his head up. She gives him only a chaste kiss. "Take them off, _hero_." There is amusement in her eyes and her mouth forms into a smirk. For a moment Suzaku thinks that she will revert to yanking his hair and kissing him roughly, but she only strokes his hair and urges him to go on, which makes him think that he is missing the point.

It's not directed at him, so he quickly forgets.

Suzaku doesn't know when her shoes had fallen off, but her pants slide from her legs like water. He plays with her panties-lacy, a soft lavender color. His hands are trapped between them when Leloucia decides to mold herself to his body, seemingly trying to make as much contact with him as is possible. She slides down the zipper and gets him out of his pilot suit while she nuzzles his neck.

Soon they are both naked and Suzaku takes a hold of her hips. "Are you...?"

"Yes, Suzaku." Suzaku had thought so. She had never seemed like the type to have spontaneous sex (oh, the irony) and her kisses had been sloppy at the beginning. But the way she had yanked his hair and the way he had pushed him around... Well, it had made him wonder if she _wasn't_ a virgin.

Suzaku kisses her, sweet and deep until she relaxes and forgets about the pain when he enters her. He kisses her all the while, sometimes kissing her body before her mouth begs him for attention once more. He strokes and pinches and licks where he wants to. He finds he loves her hips even more than her breasts, a feat of its own, when his eyes keep sliding down to trace her curves. His hands fit perfectly, like her hips were made for them, like his hands were made for them. He runs his hands down her spine, extracting shudders from Leloucia.

Suzaku's hands encircle her ankles when she begins to get tired, and he places her legs on his shoulders. Leloucia gives a sharp gasp as she shifts and falls to the floor until he catches her. He takes over, thrusting slowly but deep until he can't stick to his rhythm anymore and he plunges into her wildly, her hips moving just as frantically bellow him.

It is only after they finish that he realizes they hadn't used a condom. That manages to wake him up from his post-coital sleepiness. He tells Leloucia but she doesn't seem concerned. She mutters something about a pill.

TZI

When he wakes up, Leloucia is laying on top of him. He thinks it's a dream. He has them once in a while when he wakes up next to Euphemia... Euphemia is dead. Leloucia is Zero.

And what does he care? Leloucia hadn't turned him away last night.

Systems? What does Suzaku care about systems? He would follow Leloucia to the ends of the world.

TZI

Suzaku doesn't follow Leloucia to the ends of the world. He gives her up to the Emperor, her father. She screams at him the whole time about their friendship, carefully avoiding what had happened between them in Kamine Island. Although Suzaku feels horrible about trading her memories for a place as a Knight of the Round, he doesn't back out of his decision.

It isn't until later that Suzaku realizes that he never gave up Leloucia, but had been forced to by the Emperor.

TZI

When news of Zero's return reach Suzaku, he thinks of Leloucia all night, remembering the way she had moved against him, completely forgetting he had been with Euphemia before her.

Suzaku goes back to Area Eleven willingly. He half-heartedly makes Leloucia speak to Nunnally only to find out that Leloucia doesn't remember having a sister. He doesn't mind. Zero is at large and he has been given orders to remain in Area Eleven to crush the Black Knights once again.

There is nothing left of the shyness that had plagued Suzaku a year ago when he believed that entering a relationship with his best friend would push her away from him. He seduces Leloucia. She never has a chance. When she hands him back his phone, momentarily confirming she isn't Zero, he draws her into a kiss. They dance the whole night away, a blur of slow songs and even slower kisses. When the party is over, he takes her to her room in the clubhouse and makes love to her.

Suzaku knows she remembers them being together before he became a Knight of the Rounds, but instead of being in Kamine Island, her memories show them being in the Avalon, her staying there at his insistence after all the Ashford students had been dropped off.

The following are some of the best weeks of his life.

TZI

Gino and Nonnette suddenly change sides. They are part of the Black Knights now, as is Jeremiah. Suzaku knows they have been Geassed into serving Zero, except Jeremiah. Suzaku knows the man had served Marianne The Flash in his youth. He knows with certainty that Zero is Leloucia. Zero's strategies manage to be bold yet elegant and Suzaku has never seen anyone do that except Leloucia; not even Schneizel, since he only manages the elegant part.

Although he suspects the Emperor suspects him, Suzaku keeps his mouth shut on the matter.

Most of the time Leloucia is away so is Suzaku. There are a few times he is in Ashford but Leloucia isn't. Instead of her, he sees a double of Leloucia, an impostor. Suzaku can tell because Leloucia moves in a certain kind of way and this impostor does not. He stays away from the impostor, not initiating any of the sex, waiting until Leloucia comes to him. Whoever his lover had left to cover for her knows she isn't supposed to sleep with him.

If Suzaku hadn't known that Leloucia was Zero, that would have tipped him off. He is pleased at her subtle-or unsubtle-show of possessiveness.

TZI

Zero's death throws Suzaku into a state of uncertainty, fluctuating between despair and anger. She isn't dead, he keeps telling himself. Something tells him he should go to Kamine Island, so he does. To his relief, he finds Leloucia there.

Suzaku scoops her up and kisses her like he never has before. Relief floods into him, quickly followed by apprehension as Bismark appears and separates them. Leloucia kisses him one last time. Suzaku stays and fights meanwhile he thinks what the kiss meant; why it felt like a goodbye.

In the end, Bismark knocks Suzaku unconscious. He wakes up to find C.C. and Anya bent over looking at him.

TZI

After Leloucia deals with her two megalomanic parents by Geassing _God_ into killing them, she makes him her Knight and takes the throne. They take over the world. They are happy.

And then Leloucia visits Nunnally and guilt drives her to extremes. The Zero Requiem is born. Suzaku almost poisons Nunnally, but C.C. stops him, claiming Nunnally's death would do Leloucia more harm than good.

The damage has been done.

TZI

Suzaku stares at the mask hatefully. That mask had caused everything. If it wasn't for that mask... Maybe if he destroys it...

"Suzaku," Leloucia's voice yanks him out of his fantasies. "Take the mask, Suzaku."

Looking into her eyes, he decides that it's time he uses what made her want to do this-guilt. "I don't want to do this. I don't want you to do this."

"I need to do this." Suzaku knows she is afraid because her expression is serene and calm. Any thoughts of guilt-tripping her into doing what he wants go out the window.

"Oh, Leloucia, you don't need to do this." His hand wraps around her wrist, guiding her hand to set the mask on a nearby table. Suzaku is careful to never touch the mask, as if touching it means he will have to carry on with Leloucia's masochistic plans.

He draws her into his arms.

The next day when he wakes up, the bed is empty besides him and the mask's still on the table.

TZI

The crowd chants Zero's name, unaware that the real Zero is the Empress dying next to her wailing sister; unaware that the man wearing Zero's mask is crying silently, eyes glued to the figure of his dying lover.

Unaware.


End file.
